Apple Math Tray

Apples, apples, apples - it's that time of year! We have these awesome little acrylic apples that I found at Michaels last year that are just perfect for celebrating the upcoming season change. We have sorted and counted apples on the light table and we have picked them off of a sticky color matching apple tree. Recently, I set up this simple Montessori preschool math tray using the acrylic apples. It was a great way to practice counting, one-to-one correspondence, and addition.

My math loving boy, J, was all over this activity. Actually, he's all over any activity that involves numbers and/or dice (see here for example), so I knew this math tray would be a hit. He simply rolled the dice and counted the corresponding number of apples.

And rolled some more! Then added them all up. To be more precise, he would roll the dice, add the dice in his head, say the correct answer, and then proceed to count out the apples. Crazy math kid alert!